A Pew study released Tuesday finds that Americans think gun violence has escalated when in reality it's way down from two decades ago. The violence has dropped, meanwhile, even as gun ownership has increased.

Mass shootings, frantic gun-buying, and more Americans legally carrying guns on the street all point to a country fighting a gun violence epidemic, right?

Not necessarily.

As part of a broader trend of declining crime, gun violence in America  while still high relative to other...

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The gun prohibition lobby has long promoted this idea that reducing the number of guns is a good idea, that fewer guns are better categorically, says Dave Kopel, a research analyst at the Independence Institute in Denver. But here we have a real world experiment which shows the opposite, where we have a huge decline in gun crime at the same time as theres been an enormous increase in the firearms supply in the United States. It doesnt prove that the increase in gun numbers or licensed carry caused the decline, but it sure does contest the simplistic theory that more guns equal more crime....

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And New York Mayor Michael Bloombergs Mayors Against Illegal Guns is spending money on ads to put pressure on key Republican and Democratic senators in Arkansas, Alaska, North Dakota, and New Hampshire to change their votes.

But while the Pew findings are dramatic, other polls suggest that Americans perceptions about the level of gun violence arent necessarily turning into political concern about the trend.

According to a new Gallup poll asking Americans about top legislative priorities, gun control and immigration reform ranked at the bottom of 12 key ideas, with creating more jobs, helping the economy grow, and making government work more efficiently pegged as the top three priorities for the country.

“The violence has dropped, meanwhile, even as gun ownership has increased.”

And crime and gun violence has dropped MORE in States that passed conceal carry permit legislation than it has in States that did not.

Sort of like if a corrupt town hires a go-getter Police Chief and he makes a lot of arrests - guess what? According to the way they count it - CRIME GOES UP. If a crime goes unreported and a criminal unarrested - it doesn't count towards crime statistics.

Currently violent crime has not been this low since 1963. It peaked in the early 1990’s (IIRC) and has been going down for the last 20 years or so.

9
posted on 05/09/2013 12:21:56 PM PDT
by allmendream
(Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)

I think “totalitarianism” is the threat we’re all concerned about, whether it’s communist, fascist or “other.” We’re all fearful of what will happen when the economy hits bottom and our “friendly” government reaches out to “help” us.

Perhaps CRIMINAL CONTROL is the reason? New York's murder rate dropped like a rock when Giuliani took over. That is because he locked up murderers and criminals who likely would at some point murder. Criminal control, not gun control, saves lives.

” Treat black crime statistics separately, and the US comes in the middle of all those other countries.

Why are blacks so violent?”

You can extrapolate several reasons from the statistics. A broken family structure (no father/single mother) The father is missing/effectively displaced by the state as a stabilizing influence. The state rewards multiple unwed births or offers a convenient way out. See Gosnell case for more info. Also read “The Making of a Slave”http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Slave-Willie-Lynch/dp/1607961431

Americans think gun violence has escalated when in reality it's way down from two decades ago.

Thats right, Monitor, ignore the media conspiracy to make people think gun crimes are at epidemic levels.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Book I, Ch 10)

Liberals love the idea that businessmen should be assumed to be colluding - but given the fact that the Associated Press newswire is a virtual meeting of all major journalists which has been in continuous operation for over a century and a half, Smiths dictum about conspiracy applies to journalists more than to anyone else. By now, according to Smith, we should expect journalism to be little else but a conspiracy against the public.

And that is what we observe - journalism relentlessly criticizes anyone and everyone upon whom the public depends, but gives a pass to the untrustworthy.

34
posted on 05/09/2013 7:45:29 PM PDT
by conservatism_IS_compassion
(Liberalism is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)

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